Top-down approach to offender profiling

What is offender profiling?

Predicting characteristics of an offender based on features of the crime.

It is done to narrow down the number of potential suspects.

Who developed the top-down approach?

The FBI.

They developed it to have a systematic profiling technique - to help solve bizarre murder cases and produce a profile of the most likely offender.

What are the stages of the top-down approach?

1. Profiling inputs

2. Decision process models

3. Crime assessment

4. Criminal profile

5. Crime assessment

6. Apprehension

Explain stage 1 - profiling inputs.

Data collection relating to the crime, including:

Description of the crime scene

Background info about the victim (employment, relationships)

Details of the crime itself (weapon, cause of death)

Explain stage 2 - decisions process models

The profiler organises the data into meaningful patterns, including:

Murder type - spree/serial

Time factors - duration of the crime, time of day

Location factors

Explain stage 3 - crime assessment (most important)

The crime is categorised based on the data collected.

It’s categorised into either an organised or disorganised crime.

What are the features of an organised offender?

The crime tends to be planned

Victim is specifically targeted

Weapon is hidden

Body transported away from the crime scene

The offender is high in intelligence

They usually follow crimes in the media

They’re sexually and socially competent

They usually live with a partner

Example of organised offender

Ted Bundy -

He was intelligent, studying law.

He was charismatic and handsome.

He left very little evidence at the crime scene

He maintained interest in the victims after death - revisiting their corpses

He had several serious relationships.

What are the features of a disorganised offender?

The opposite to an organised offender -

Crime tends to be spontaneous

The victim is selected randomly

Sexual acts are usually performed on the body after death

The crime scene is likely to contain many clues - such as blood, semen, fingerprints, the murder weapon

Explain stage 4 - criminal profile

A profile of the offender is constructed - includes hypotheses about their likely background and habits.

This description is used to work out a strategy to catch the offender.

Explain stage 5 - Investigation

A written report is given to the police and people matching the profile are evaluated.

If new evidence is generated or no suspect is identified, the process goes back to step 2.

Explain stage 6 - apprehension (final stage)

If a suspect is arrested, the entire process is reviewed to check that the conclusions made at each stage were legitimate.

Positive eval

Police using the top-down approach find it useful - Copson (1995) found that 82% of police officers said the technique was useful, and 90% said they’d use it again.

Negative eval

Barnum effect - offender profiles can be vague and broad, matching lots of potential criminals. Brent Snook (2008) believed that profilers don’t do much more than psychics - profiles could be applied to a large amount of people. Therefore the top-down approach may not be very useful.

Profiling can cause harm - Jackson and Bekerian (1997) suggest that smart offenders can simply read about how profiles are constructed and leave misleading cues in their crime scenes. This may lead the police in the wrong direction - the actual criminal could be overlooked.

Typology (personality type) approach is flawed - Turvey (1999) suggests that people can have features of an organised and disorganised offender. The approach is therefore oversimplified.

Conclusion

The top-down approach is a good way to profile criminals, although it can be vague and misleading - so it shouldn’t always be believed without consideration.